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Art news / 9 – 15 May

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Here’s our picks of the week, which stories caught your eye? Let us know in the comments.

1. The Turner Prize: £25,000 and a lot of kudos (previously winners have included Gilbert & George, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry), is designed to reward outstanding British artists under 50, and it’s nominations usually generate quite a stir. This year is no different, with organisers of the event selecting the creators of a choo-choo train, unreadable text and an 18ft sculpture of a naked bum crashing through some bricks.

The judging panel this year is Cotton, director of Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Tamsin Dillon, curator; Beatrix Ruf, director, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Simon Wallis, director, the Hepworth Wakefield. It is chaired by Farquharson. (via The Guardian)

2. At the Post War and Contemporary Art auction at Christies in New York, Jean Michel-Basquiat achieved an artist record with his Untitled (1982) work, realizing a formidable US$57,300,000 / £39,606,300 /€50,109,300 – which is quite a considerable margin compare to his previous most expensive work, Dust Heads, which sold in 2013 for $43,500,000. The painting was apparently bought by a Japanese businessman. Read more on this story here.

3. It was also a record breaking week for Mexico’s most notorious artist, Frida Kahlo;Two Nudes in the Forest (The Earth Itself), 1939 (pictured), sold for $8 million, which is the highest price yet for the artist, and potentially portends a growing appreciation of her work. Before this sale, her most expensive work had been Roots, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2006 for $5.6 million. (via Art Daily)

4. In lieu of a his new exhibition at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, Antony Gormley gave an interview with the Guardian in which he enlightened us as to his thoughts on people taking selfies, and in regards to people taking selfies with his statues, “In many ways, the selfie is charming. It’s another sense of community, but at the same time it represents a lack of physical community. It’s one of the paradoxes of our time, we live closer and closer together, but we spend more and more time apart.” Should you ever ask him for a selfie? “Doing selfies? I’m always obliged because it’s the least I can do,” he laughs. (via The Guardian)

5. Anish Kapoor has a new exhibition of 14 sleek, stainless steel sculptures on show at the Lisson Gallery in Milan. Each of the sculptures have been twisted through various rotations and degrees, but never amounting to more than 90° (a quarter of a turn). Kapoor referred to similar works of his as ‘non-objects’, due to the internal geometry and absolute reflectivity of the material, they carry the conditions of their own disappearance. (via Art Daily)

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